1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a card feeding apparatus and more particularly, to a card feeding apparatus having a function of supplying cards on respective tables from a card stack and feeding the cards placed on the respective tables toward the outside one by one.
The present invention is preferably applied to random and selective feeding of cards of different types or kinds.
The term “card” used in this specification means widely card-shaped articles, which includes not only typical cards such as telephone cards, prepaid cards, character cards, portrait photographs, IC (Integrated Circuit) cards, magnetic-stripe cards (e.g., credit cards and bank cards), and bar-coded cards, but also other thin plate-shaped articles made of paper, plastic or the like that are equivalent to or larger than the typical cards in thickness.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, as the first prior art of the present invention, a card feeding apparatus for separating the lowest-positioned card from a card stack in which a plurality of cards are stacked vertically in a line one by one and for feeding the card thus separated in a predetermined feeding direction is known, which is disclosed in the Japanese Patent No. 4991995 issued on Aug. 8, 2012. This prior-art apparatus comprises a card storing means for storing a plurality of cards in a card stack in such a way as to be stacked vertically in a line, and a card feeding means for separating the lowest-positioned card from the card stack and for feeding the card thus separated in a predetermined feeding direction.
In the card stack of the card storing means, the opposing faces of the two adjoining cards are in contact with each other, and all the stacked cards are arranged so as to form a quadrangular prism.
The card feeding means comprises a base to which a card is pressed during conveyance, a conveying member on which a card separated from the card stack in the card storing means is placed in such a way that the card is sandwiched by the base and the conveying member, and a flat loop moving means for moving the conveying member in such a way as to draw a flat loop. By the motion of the flat loop moving means, the card held by the base and the conveying member is fed in the feeding direction utilizing friction force among them (see FIGS. 1, 4, and 5 and Paragraphs 0040 to 0049).
As the second prior art of the present invention, an automatic card issuing apparatus is known, which is disclosed in the Japanese Non-Examined Patent Publication No. 5-210783 issued on Aug. 20, 1993. This prior-art apparatus comprises a card stacker for storing a plurality of cards in the form of stack without mutual touch among the cards, a pushing member for pushing a desired card selected from the stacked cards in the card stack out of the card stack, and a card detector for detecting the presence and absence of the respective cards in the card stack. The card stacker and/or the card pushing member is/are moved upward and downward.
While moving the card stacker and/or the card pushing member upward and downward motion, the card detector detects whether or not a card is held at a specified one from the card positions in the card stack. If no card is found at the specified card position, the card detector detects whether or not a card is held at a next card position again. This card detection process is repeated until a card is found at the specified card position. On the other hand, if a card is found at the specified card position, the pushing member is moved to the specified card position and pushes the card held at the same position to the outside of the card stacker (see FIGS. 1 to 3 and Paragraphs 0015 to 0023).
In recent years, the use of the card feeding apparatus of this type has been diversifying. For example, one use of this apparatus is to feed randomly a plurality of cards of different types or kinds according to the necessity in the single card feeding apparatus.
In the case where the aforementioned first prior-art card feeding apparatus is used for this purpose, a plurality of cards of different types/kinds is stacked vertically in a predetermined order to form a card stack in the card storing means. If so, the types/kinds of the cards to be fed are determined in accordance with the predetermined stacking order of the cards, which means that the cards of different types/kinds are unable to be fed randomly according to the necessity. If the first prior-art card feeding apparatus disclosed in the Japanese Patent No. 4991995 is provided for each type/kind of the cards, the cards of different types/kinds are able to be fed in a random order by selectively activating one of the first prior-art card feeding apparatuses according to the necessity. In this case, however, there arises a problem that the overall size of the combination of the first prior-art card feeding apparatuses is excessively enlarged and the fabrication cost is also raised.
On the other hand, in the case where the aforementioned second prior-art card issuing apparatus disclosed in the Japanese Non-Examined Patent Publication No. 5-210783 is used for this purpose, the card pushing operation by the pushing member is able to be performed only at the card position where the presence of a card is detected by the card detector. This means that there arises a problem that the total number of cards to be fed is limited. If the total number of cards that can be stored in the card stacker is increased, this problem can be solved; however, there arises another problem that the card stacker is excessively upsized.